I’ve been recovering from a lengthy creative hiatus, which was caused by both some intense emotional stress and some burnout. It’s always challenging in some way to get back on the horse, especially since I had some bad habits, which I feel are worth discussing here.

Yo dudes, I figured I’d collect some old pixel art here, to share with you all. I was really into pixel art in 2014-2016. Been taking a break from it though ever since I determined that game dev isn’t for me, at least for the time being.

This bonsai was one of the first things I ever did. There were a few iterations before it, but I’m quite pleased with how I managed to capture the organic feel of it.

This orb was from a random prompt generator, which gave me “sphere from the fall”, and this was my interpretation.

This one I called “The Drunken Gods Coalesce”, and I feel it has the most interesting composition of the square pixels I did back in early 2015 (most of which aren’t pictured here–not all of them were interesting).

The three illustrations above (pardon the blurriness in some, they resized oddly) were a progression of my taking an idea and shaping it further and further into something interesting. At this stage of my art career I wasn’t the greatest at adding contrast, as I was afraid of using darker tones, but it was a good learning experience. I still like the sense of depth I achieved, however.

I called this piece “Woken Being of Light”. I spent about 10hrs working on this, and as you can probably tell, it’s where my avatar/logo came from. I rather like how well the lighting and contrast came out on this.

This one was fun to do. It’s of and called “The Hungry Door”, which I did with the intent of making something creepy and nostalgic.

This is a commission I did of a cyber-witch for a friend, early last year. The contrast in it still leans toward the lighter side. This is the last piece I made in Photoshop before switching completely to Aseprite.

Anyway, thank you for reading my short excursion into my earlier days of doing pixel art! I’ll post some of my newer things, including some unused game concepts, sometime.

So, it’s been an eventful few days, after a rough patch last week (which I posted about for my Patreon subscribers). I’m doing better now, however, and am making changes to my life to hopefully prevent or lessen the impact of such an episode in the future.

Such changes include my giving up alcohol for good. It’s been doing me no favors and I’ve wasted too much money on it. There’s little point in consuming something so unhealthy, anyway. I’d rather drink tea instead, so I will.

I’ve also been changing my inner self-talk. I used to use very demeaning language when talking to myself, particularly when I’ve made an error or remembered a past one. Instead, I’m just shrugging things off and taking them as a note to do better in the future. Live and learn, eh?

On top of all that, I’ve picked up my copy of Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon (who you should really give a follow on Twitter) again. This book is full of amazing creative advice for artists. There’s no shame in “stealing” things and making them your own. Now, neither I nor the book mean in the sense of plagiarism. It’s all about taking some cool shit and mashing them together into something new, interesting, and our own.

Other than that, I’ve been laying more groundwork for my fifth rewrite of Recompense, a story I’ve had in the works for like four years now. I’m hoping to make the best out of it I can this time, and know I will. This story deserves it. I deserve it, too, for all the effort I’ve been putting in. Heck yeah, getting better at a skill.

I haven’t done any noteworthy art this past week, but I’ll get back on the horse sooner or later. Getting some space from such things lets me come back with more fondness and eagerness than before.